Abstract – Distributed Digital Preservation (DDP) is by nature capable of ensuring that the promise of guaranteeing the longevity of digital objects stored in digital repositories can be fulfilled. However, for the security guarantee of these digital objects to exist beyond theory, managers of Institutional Repositories (IRs) must build their Digital Preservation Policies (DPP) in accordance with international regulations and standards.
In this way, the scope for the research selected a group of IRs that present such characteristics. This work aims to describe the structure of the DPP of the IRs of the LOCKSS networks, observing their compliance with the ISO 14721 and Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification: Criteria and Checklist (TRAC) standards, thus highlighting the situation of IRs in Brazil in contrast to that of other repositories on the same network.

The methodology is based on exploratory, descriptive and qualitative research, which analyzes documentation on digital preservation policies, aiming to describe their structures and main characteristics. When using the comparative method, suggestive similarities and contrasts between cases are brought into focus.

The results revealed that most of the IRs investigated have a well-defined digital preservation management structure that includes websites dedicated to Digital Preservation, Policies Framework, which are available online and are easily accessible. However, in the Brazilian context, there is still a long way to go, as the lack of DPP and other risk mitigation devices sets up an alarming scenario.

It was concluded that DDP is a practice that provides a guarantee of longevity for the IRs in their networks, but this is only possible due to the fact that the Institutions responsible for the IRs develop their policies in accordance with the LOCKSS guidelines, which follow ISO 14721 and TRAC standards. Furthermore, a policy should not be built without the support of a framework structure to standardize the document.

Keywords – Distributed Digital Preservation, LOCKSS, Digital Preservation Management, Digital Preservation Policies Framework, Institutional Repositories.

This paper was submitted for the iPRES2024 conference on March 17, 2024 and reviewed by Dr. Panagiotis Papageorgiou, Sam Alloing, Marin Rappard and 1 anonymous reviewer. The paper was accepted with reviewer suggestions on May 6, 2024 by co-chairs Heather Moulaison-Sandy (University of Missouri), Jean-Yves Le Meur (CERN) and Julie M. Birkholz (Ghent University & KBR) on behalf of the iPRES2024 Program Committee.

Introduction

It is to no one's surprise that Memory Institutions in Brazil are experiencing difficulties in developing a minimum of Digital Preservation practices. This condition is due to several factors, among the most common causes found in scientific production over the last twenty years are the scarcity of financial resources and the lack of professional training. However, these are just reflections of a problem of much wider proportions.

It was observed, from the literature review, that the vulnerability of the Brazilian scenario is directly linked to the absence of a digital preservation management structure in IRs. For this reason, within the scope of the research project “Preservação Digital e Análise de Risco em Repositórios Institucionais Brasileiros”, it was necessary to have a context that could guide where to start the research. Aiming to think of a solution to the difficulties of Brazilian IRs.

The main reason that made us select the LOCKSS network repositories as the scope of this research is the fact that the Stanford University Libraries' LOCKSS (Lots Of Copies Keep Stuff Safe) program provides open source technologies and services with high trust, resilience and trustworthy digital preservation. As well as because its networks have been committed to collective work for over twenty years that demonstrates effectiveness and efficiency in the process of digital longevity.

This way, the first approach to the investigation sought to select the digital repositories of each Institution from the LOCKSS networks, however it was observed that the documentation on DPP is not directly linked to the IR, but there is an environment dedicated to the documentation of Digital Preservation.

cIRcle, for example, the Institutional Repository of the University of British Columbia (UBC), has a specific domain for accessing its content (circle.ubc.ca), but the library makes documentation on Digital Preservation available in a specific subdomain of its own website (digitize.library.ubc.ca).

The website was designed to contain everything related to the Institution's Digital Preservation, including IR. This structure provides clear and objective access to the content, especially the digital preservation policy document, in addition to the entire description of the organizational, technical and technological apparatus relevant to the institution's digital longevity guarantee practices.

This structure is not exclusive to UBC, it was observed during the investigation that a significant part of the Institutions follow the same standard, with the exception of those that only have the document in autonomous document format (PDF), which were few, but at this point are very similar to the case of Brazilian institutions, which for the most part do not have documentation of institutional DPP.

In addition to this website structure, the IRs policies of the LOCKSS networks follow a standard framework for preparing their content. Penn State University Libraries is an example of this dedicated structure for DPP, its structure includes a complex and very in-depth framework in aspects that govern the management of digital preservation in the IR.

Based on this scenario, this work aims to describe the structure of DPP for the IRs of LOCKSS networks, observing their compliance with international standards, as LOCKSS follows the OAIS Model and TRAC.

After systematizing the data on the policy structure, a comparison was made with the Brazilian context, in which a contrast of great proportions and a worrying situation was identified. It is understandable that the majority of institutional repositories in Brazil were born following the flow of the first motivating actions of the first decades of the 21st century, but even so, this is still not enough to justify the lack of attention towards Digital Preservation Management and its aspect most relevant - the documentation.

A policy provides the scope of actions that will be taken in strategic planning and will be the basis for preservation management of the repository's long-term preservation project.

Digital Preservation Policies in LOCKSS
Network Institutions

Policies and other documentation of decisions and actions represent one of the best indicators of the development of the components that reflect the central aspects of Digital Preservation: the organizational infrastructure, the technological infrastructure and the necessary resources, from Nancy McGovern's three-legged theory [1].
Therefore, it was identified that these infrastructures are present in the framework of the DPP of the IRs of the LOCKSS networks.
In the definition of the InterPARES 2 project, policy is “a set of rules that guide decision-making and actions in order to achieve the desired results for a given objective. The policy provides a structure that determines the scope and requirements of the procedures, but does not describe specific actions, this is the role of the procedures” [2, p.9].
This point was observed and is also justified in the policies of the LOCKSS network, as in addition to the policy document, on the websites of institutions dedicated to Digital Preservation there are also other documents, in particular the strategic plan.
A policy should provide guidance and authorization on the preservation of digital materials, to ensure their long-term authenticity, reliability and accessibility. Institutions that maintain a written policy demonstrate that they have taken responsibility for preserving the digital material deposited in their repository. It is noteworthy that the texts of the LOCKSS network policies are in accordance with this statement.
Regarding the perspective of the InterPARES/ICA project, a DPP must provide the scenario for action and planning so that the long-term maintenance and preservation of an organization's records can be guaranteed. In this way, following a DPP throughout the active life of documents will facilitate the long-term preservation of inactive documents, whether it is the creator who preserves the records or a trusted third party [2, p.8].
In line with this perspective, the DPP should be viewed as an essential document in which an organization summarizes its approaches to achieving goals and objectives for the long-term preservation of digital collections. [3]
It is also worth highlighting that for a policy to reflect the basic conditions for guaranteeing digital preservation, it must comply with, at least, ISO 14721, 16363 and TRAC. LOCKSS, the SCALE project and InterPARES 2 project justify the creation of its framework for DPP, due to compliance with these standards, but InterPARES also uses a series of other standards that are directly or indirectly linked to Digital Preservation [2].

Digital Preservation Policy Framework

At a conference in Tomar, Portugal, in 1998, Neil Beagrie said that Digital Preservation is crucial as part of a series of other issues that affect the creation, storage and use of a resource. And there are a number of interdependent issues that have suggested the need for an integrated policy framework to develop a cost-effective approach to creating, preserving and utilizing resources [4].
Based on the observations of Beagrie (1998), throughout this investigation it was noted that the institutions of the LOCKSS Networks have the documentation, they also developed a website structure dedicated to Digital Preservation content and a framework for DPP.
In this research it was necessary to recognize the difference between the concepts of structure and framework. A structure is the way the parts of a system or object are arranged or organized. While a framework is a supporting structure around which something can be built.
Beagrie says that the framework structure of his project itself is based on the phases of the life cycle of digital resources, from their creation, management and preservation, to use, and on the dependencies and interrelationships between these phases and the legal environments, business and technical in which they exist [4].
The researcher argues that an integrated policy framework can also help funding agencies maximize their academic and financial investment in creating primary and secondary data resources, and data creators maximize cost-effectiveness, purpose and design of his scanning programs.
Thus, the basis of every IR is the DPP framework, because it is the policy framework that makes IR viable, because without it, IRs are nothing but a content container [5].

An overview of Digital Preservation
Policies in Brazil

Now we give an overview of the Brazilian context with regard to DPP. Having carried out an investigation into preservation policies in Brazil, it was noted that there is a worrying scenario. As there are few institutions that have a policy, so it was not possible to make a comprehensive comparison between the perspectives as proposed.
It is a pertinent problem in Brazil. In 2004, Sônia Boeres investigated twenty one Brazilian libraries, one of the results of her dissertation showed that only seven libraries had DPP. For the Brazilian researcher, the university library is an important instrument in accessing and retrieving information for both the academic community and the general public.
Boeres warned, at the time, that libraries could be threatened if the institutions responsible for them were not attentive to the preservation of digital information, especially if they did not develop policies to achieve this purpose [6].
The following year, Boeres and Márdero Arellano, argued that Digital Preservation is the longest and also the last part of the digital object management cycle, since with Digital Preservation it is possible to employ mechanisms that allow storage in repositories of digital objects and which guarantee the authenticity and perpetuity of their contents.
At that time, digital information management planning was still precarious, however, ISO 15489 (2003) was the option adopted by the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) for the management of electronic records throughout the life cycle of digital documents. the official character of the American government [7].
Digital storage still did not have the capacity it had in the second decade of the 21st century, but the international Digital Preservation community was attentive to the transformations that were about to happen, especially about digital repositories that were already being targeted for study and encouraging researchers to develop research that resulted in documents such as the TRAC, which later, in 2012, would become ISO 16363 - Audit and certification of trustworthy digital repositories, a standard that defines recommendations for evaluating the reliability of digital repositories.
Researchers Ronnie Farias and Marcos Galindo and his team from the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco (UFPE) reported that few institutions claimed to have the competence to guarantee long-term access to the content of their repositories. The reason, the group concluded, was, among others, the lack of institutional DPP. In their research, only four out of fifteen institutions surveyed had a DPP for their IRs [8].
Thus, we understand so far that between 2003 and 2016, the physical library in Brazil was still in operation and full use, while IRs had not yet reached the popularity that was expected. It is possible to prove this fact due to research by Farias and Galindo who, analyzing the usage behavior of IRs at public universities in Brazil, found that this use had not yet surpassed, at the time, the use of libraries or search engines of the internet. The authors believe that this was due to a lack of training among users, who either did not know what the tool was or did not know of its existence. [8]
This condition may be due to the absence of a Digital Preservation Management structure in these IRs. Because lots of digital preservation projects have been designed without concern for how Digital Preservation Management should be carried out throughout the planning and development stages of a Memory Institution's digital preservation project so that it benefits their IR [1]. This includes following normalization and standardization guidelines for a DPP framework.

Methodology

The methodology of this paper is based on exploratory, descriptive and qualitative research, which analyzes documentation on DPP, aiming to describe their structures and main characteristics.

The comparative method was used to compare the Brazilian context of DPP with other institutions in the LOCKSS networks, since the Cariniana network is the LOCKSS representative in Brazil. Because comparison brings into focus suggestive similarities and contrasts among cases.
The comparative method is a “fundamental tool for analysis, as it enhances the power of description and plays a central role in the formation of concepts, bringing into focus similarities and suggestive contrasts between cases. Comparison should be used to test hypotheses and can contribute to the inductive discovery of new hypotheses, as well as to the construction of theories” [9, p.105].

About the theoretical framework of this research, in 2012, the InterPARES project together with the International Council on Archives (ICA) published a guide for preservation of digital records. This guide, together with the work of Neil Beagrie (1998), Nancy McGovern (2004) and InterPARES 2 (2008), serves as a basis for the theoretical foundation and elaboration of a framework for DPP in this paper.

Discussion of Results

First it was observed that the Institution's library is responsible for the repository, therefore it is the one that describes and manages the DPP, with the support of a group of committees from the other sectoral libraries. Everything related to the digital preservation process is linked to the library website, including the repository's preservation policy framework.
However, the library responds to the preservation networks that carry out all the information management work, providing training and updates regarding good digital preservation practices.
This perspective is justified by the statement from the University of New South Wales, described in the preservation strategies section that whenever possible they are aligned with ISO 13.636:2012 – Standard for Trusted Digital Repositories, with regard to preservation threats to be faced by a trusted digital repository. Proactively monitor the operational context and related technology to identify, assess and, if necessary, address key threats against digital content in your repository UNSWorks.” [10]
It is understood that this repository seeks to follow the guidelines of standards established by its preservation network, but it is not bound by responsibility, as the CLOCKSS network is the one that must be requested to provide this support.

Said that, the research begins with an investigation on the LOCKSS website [11] to identify its networks and the networks were identified in the networks' member pages [12]. Soon after, the institutions were identified individually in their networks website. We identified six hundred and ten institutions.

Once the institutions were identified and the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) of their institutional websites were collected, then to identify documentation of DPP was used the IRs search tool (Internal Search Engines).

Internal Search Engines (ISE) are complex structures that perform searches within the website's database. They work with a tracking, indexing, rendering, and ranking model, to bring the most relevant results in the search, allowing the user to locate content within the application, so that the search returns not only the search term, but also other relevant terms and a classification based on the relevance of the term, locating the most exact occurrences.
The research scope was limited to carrying out queries using the ISE of the websites of each of the institutions surveyed. For exploratory research on institution websites some criteria were defined. The first of these criteria was select searches only in the English language. Another approach beyond this language or from a broader scope could likely bring broader results, as the sites' ISE can return results in local languages such as German, French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, among others. The second criteria applied to find IRs was to use the term “institutional repository”. In this way, one hundred and eighty four repositories were identified, as shown in table I.

Table I
LOCKSS networks

The third criteria applied to search for documentation on DPP was similar to the previous one, only changing the term to “digital preservation policy”. The query returned forty search results. The table II shows the institutions from which policy documentation was identified.

Table II
Institutions of LOCKSS networks

Please be advised that The ADPNet, SAFE PLN and GLN, WestVault networks were removed from table II, due to the redundancy of institutions that are part of more than one network. The Global LOCKSS Network (GLN) was removed, as according to the LOCKSS website, every institution that joins the LOCKSS alliance becomes part of this network [12].
Once the policy documentation was identified, the material was analyzed to collect and systematize data on policy structures, their characteristics and other aspects. Finally, with the systematization of data in hand, an attempt was made to apply the comparative method between LOCKSS and Brazilian policies.

The IRs that are part of the Cariniana Network served as a parameter to understand the context of Brazil in relation to the international scenario. By 2022, there were twenty one partner institutions of the Cariniana Network [12]. All repositories of partner institutions were identified during the research, but only four have a DPP.
The identified policies were published in the last decade, the oldest being from 2011 and the most current from 2022, except for the most current ones, no update was found for the others. The publication date of the documents ranges from the State University of Campinas (2011), the Paulista State University (2017), the Federal University of Santa Maria (2019) to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (2022).
In 2023, Marcos Bittencourt Souza found that despite the many challenges to be overcome by the Network's partner IRs, they are largely the responsibility of managers and originate from issues of sustainability, technical, organizational, and personnel structures. In any case, despite the deficiency in planning and management of Digital Preservation, the researcher states that these repositories can preserve their digital objects in the long term. [13]
Regarding formats, the documents analyzed are in PDF format, except for the resolution, which is in web page format. UFSM is the only one that has a document endorsed by the institution's rectory, but there is no framework, just the resolution document made available. The text of each document aims to establish limits to the needs of each Institution.
Concerning ISO standards, only Ibict and the Federal University of Santa Maria make references to ISO standards. Ibict does not mention ISO 16363 but is based on ISO 14721, claiming to follow the conditions of the OAIS reference model. This institution is the only one of those surveyed that refers to the ISO 1636:2012 standard. Article 23 of the document discusses the security definitions of the Permanent Digital Archive to be made that must include the audit and certification of the repository under ISO 16363:2012 [13] .
From this overview, made from a sample of the DPP of Brazilian institutional repositories, it was possible to guide what the research objectives would be. The first of these was to identify how the policies of the institutions in the LOCKSS network are structured.
LOCKSS follows reliability standards such as ISO 14721:2012, TRAC, and more recently ISO 28500:2017, in addition to other standards that aim at the reliability of your digital preservation system.
The policies examined (Table III) revealed that twenty one documents mention the OAIS Reference Model, 14 to ISO 16363, and 5 referred to the standards ISO 19005-1, IEC 15444-4, 15489-1:2001, ISO 20652:2006, which makes clear the commitment of institutions through their networks.

Table III
Mentions of ISO standardization

To understand the structure of LOCKSS networks, it is important to understand that IRs are an ecosystem where the digital repository is the storage device that stores digital objects, which are accessed using specific software such as Arca, Atmire, Digital Commons, Hyrax, PUB, and Ubiquity (Fig. 1).

In the graph you can see that Atmire, Hyrax, PUB, and Ubiquity are other options for Digital Repositories Software, but they do not have the breadth of the DSpace and Digital Commons, as can be seen in the table IV.

Table IV
Most relevant information systems found, by percentage

The analysis of the structure of the forty policies allowed us to observe that access to these documents is done through a PDF file, framework, web page, and even Microsoft Word and PowerPoint (MS Office Package). The sample analyzed revealed that the most used format is the Portable Document Format (PDF), followed by web pages and the framework. Only two institutions use Microsoft's proprietary formats (Table V).

Table V
Digital preservation policies file formats

When the PDF format reached the general public, at the beginning of the 21st century, one of its characteristics was to provide more security to digital content, freeing information from proprietary software, given that, until then, the digital world was dependent on the company's Office Package. Microsoft. The digital world began to value the portable format in such a way that it went from a proprietary format to an open-source format, and its application began to be regulated by a series of ISO standards (19005-2, 19005-4, ISO 32000-1).
However, the speed at which technology transforms scenarios in the digital age is not the same as how users follow it. From the second decade of the 21st century onwards, it was already possible to build web structures to make textual information available in the HTML language.
Nowadays, it is more than possible to make this information available in an organized web structure that allows a view of the limits of the aspects and elements present in the preservation project, thus facilitating the management of digital preservation in IRs.
The web page is an option to make the policy available in the repository domain itself, however, what was observed is that the use of a more complex framework could become a trend in the future.
Thus, examining the structures of the preservation policies of the researched institutions, we sought to compare how each document was structured. At the end of the process, it was observed that some topics were recurring among the documents, thus, we sought to develop a simplified structure based on the recurring topics, under the guidance of the works highlighted at the beginning of the section V (Methodology) guides and manuals from NEDCC and ERPANET [1], [2], [3], [4], [14], [15] .

Below a suggestion for a Digital Preservation Policy Framework:

• Introduction: Contextualization and articulation of the need for policy.

• Mandate: Declaration that addresses legal, institutional and/or unitary requirements to preserve digital objects.

• Objectives: Description of the intentions of an institution or organization's digital preservation program, possibly linked to the organization's mission statement.

• Scope: Statement that establishes limits on what the organization will preserve and, in most cases, establishes priorities among various materials; Examples include, but are not limited to, born-digital materials, digitized with an analog original, digitized without an analog original, and commercially available digital materials.

• Challenges: Identification and articulation of the challenges and risks associated with the digital preservation process.

• Principles: Statement that addresses the values and philosophy by which an organization operates its digital preservation program.

• Roles and Responsibilities: Identification of the various roles in the digital preservation process; It can aggregate functions at an institutional or unit level within an institution, establish group functions, or identify individual functions.

• Collaboration: Statement that recognizes that Digital Preservation is a shared community responsibility and identifies steps to be taken to cooperate and collaborate.

• Selection and Acquisition: Criteria for materials to be preserved, linked to the repository's collection development policy.

• Access and Use: Declaration that addresses the concept of open access, as well as restriction levels; furthermore, it addresses the likely inability to render the original digital artifact and that an effort will be made to provide the best possible replacement.

• Review cycle: Establishes the validity period of each document and the frequency of actions in Digital Preservation Management.

• References: Listing that identifies other standards and policies mentioned in the policy document.

• Glossary: List of terms as needed.

When thinking about a digital preservation project and for there to be coherence in its implementation, thus facilitating preservation management in the IR, the policy needs to be seen as a pillar that will guide the strategic plan and the framework must be understood as the way of visualizing the entire digital preservation ecosystem of the institutional repository [16, p.3].

Conclusion

The preservation policy is an essential document so that the promise of guaranteeing the longevity of digital objects stored in the IR can be fulfilled. It is a fact that this tool does not have the necessary power to carry out this task. For this action to be successfully completed, Digital Preservation Management depends on an entire ecosystem of elements.
The policy is an important part of the digital preservation ecosystem, the same way that strategic planning and other tools. However, not having at least the policy is an indication of the vulnerability of the IR structure, and having it and not putting it into practice only increases the risk of a digital accident.
The results obtained demonstrated that LOCKSS network institutions comply with ISO 14721 and TRAC standards, although their responsible libraries delegate this task to the LOCKSS networks. It’s described in the University of New South Wales institutional repository (UNSWorks) DPP document which according to its preservation strategy “the risk management process will be aligned where possible with the ISO standard for trusted digital repositories (ISO 16363)” [10].
However, even if the networks have a broad vision of training and training regarding this standardization, the managers of IRs also must seek constant updating and training in these standards for their operation. Thus, the first action to be taken is to seek guidance on drafting a DPP from your partner network.
The network can provide the repository work team with the necessary instructions to manage the digital preservation of the repository, as neglect increases the vulnerability of Institutions that are concerned with long-term preservation. It is a fact that risk cannot be eradicated from human actions, nor even from machines that are operated by humans. It was clear that although ISO 16363 is not present in the text of the institutions' policies, its concepts are somehow implicit in these documents.
In spite of the circumstances, LOCKSS institutions have tools that support Digital Preservation Management, such as the Digital Preservation Policy Framework and Levels of Digital Preservation - LoDP (NDSA). On the other hand, it was clear that Brazilian institutions still do not consider DPP as a premise in their repositories.
After these observations it is concluded that the institutions investigated follow the standards established by the LOCKSS networks, but they still need to be self-sustainable, as they seem to depend exclusively on the network in which they participate or that they simply pass on the responsibility that should be shared with the network of which IR is a member.[16]

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Fundação de Empreendimentos Científicos e Tecnológicos – FINATEC for funding the research, the LOCKSS alliance, and Instituto Brasileiro de Informação Ciência e Tecnologia - Ibict.